


a fever you can't sweat out

by kewltie



Category: K-pop, Super Junior
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 05:17:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11502552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kewltie/pseuds/kewltie
Summary: Donghae shivers from the feeling of shards of ice prickling his entire body--an endless cold to completely undone him. His breath shortens as his lung constricts to get the air he desperately need and every breath seems to gnaw at his throat. It hurts and his whole body aches from a phantom pain that continues to linger. He curls deeper into himself and closes his eyes, thinking this is it for him--the end.





	a fever you can't sweat out

**Author's Note:**

> Moving some old stuff from AFF to AO3.

Donghae shivers from the feeling of shards of ice prickling his entire body--an endless cold to completely undone him. His breath shortens as his lung constricts to get the air he desperately need and every breath seems to gnaw at his throat. It hurts and his whole body aches from a phantom pain that continues to linger. He curls deeper into himself and closes his eyes, thinking this is it for him--the end.

“Donghae, you’re not dying.”

Underneath a pile of blankets, Donghae slowly uncurls himself and rolls onto his back. He pauses for a second before he reluctantly sits up and feels the vertigo trying to drag him down again, but he pushes one of his hands against the bed for support. Once he manages to get his bearings and dizziness eventually goes away, he jerks the cover off his head and sets his sight on Sungmin, who looks completely unperturbed by the glare sent his way.

Sungmin is standing by his bedside, holding a glass of water and a small blue bottle in his hands. He chooses to ignore Donghae and sets the glass of water and bottle on the nightstand nearby while Donghae sulks in his bed.

“Lie to me that will make me feel better,” Donghae grumbles. 

Sungmin sighs like it pains him to even be here. “You’re going to be fine,” he tries again. 

“I don’t feel fine,” Donghae says sullenly as he feels an onset of chills coming and wraps himself further into his blankets. He hates feeling weak and miserable. Why can’t it be over already?

“That’s because you refused to take your medicine.” Sungmin glances down at the blue bottle and back toward Donghae, who narrows his eyes at him. Sungmin, then, picks up the blue bottle and tries to hand Donghae the medicine.

Donghae shakes his head, because no and no. How many times does he have to tell everyone? He doesn’t like it. He resists wanting to take the bottle and throw it across the room. But, then he has the nagging suspicion that Sungmin would throw him across the room in response.

“It’s medicine, not poison,” Sungmin says, rolling his eyes when Donghae inches further away from him.

Donghae cringes and makes a face at the vile thing Sungmin is holding in his hand. “It taste like shit.”

“You’re not suppose to like it,” Sungmin says pointedly, once again trying to push the bottle right in Donghae’s face, but Donghae bats it away and it falls to the floor.

“Stop being so difficult,” Sungmin says through gritted teeth. “Take your goddamn medicine, Donghae.” It isn’t a request and Donghae could see Sungmin’s patience is wearing thin. They been at this since morning and Donghae has stay resolute in his stand. He is amazed though that Sungmin hasn’t given up in his nth attempt to get Donghae to take his medication like the managers had.

“I don’t want to,” he says. He knows it’s stupid to be stubborn about this, but Donghae can’t stand the taste of the medication, it makes him wants to throw up.

Sungmin bends over to pick up the medicine bottle. “Here, take it before I choose to forget that you’re sick and kick your ass.”

“You should be nice to me,” he complains, as series of coughs attack him. “Can’t you see I’m suffering?”

“I would care if we didn’t have to re-enact this argument every single time you got sick.” Sungmin says, folding his arms looking very much unimpressed by all this.

Donghae pouts. It isn’t every single time. He can’t help how being sick always make him feel so terrible, like his world is ending--like death ran him over. The medicines they give him only make him feel more ill and the ones that do work taste so awful they might as well just end him so he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. He doesn’t enjoy being sick and he doesn’t mean to make everybody’s life hard, it’s just nobody gets him. The one person who always does is not here to comfort him, to keep him company, and to make everything okay again.

“I want Hyukkie. Where is he?” he asks, looking at the clock and its already 7:56PM, Hyukjae was supposed to be here at three.

Sungmin pulls out his cell phone and seems to be checking his messages. “He’s on his way home,” he answers.

“I want to spend my last moment with him if I’m not going to pull through this,” Donghae says sorrowfully. His headaches are getting harder to bear and he just wants to sleep, but if he does he might miss seeing Hyukjae. 

“Oh Jesus.” Sungmin sighs and palms his forehead tiredly. “You’re not going to die, you have the flu not the plague.”

“I feel like I’m dying,” Donghae whines, falling back into the bed and staring up at the ceiling in despair. 

“If you didn’t give into the urge to run around in the rain like an idiot this wouldn’t have happen."

“Zhoumi was with me too, so I don’t get why I was the only one sick.” Donghae grabs one of the pillows nearest to him and punches it in resentment. He hates how he’s missing out on SJM’s activities and being excluded from the rest of the members in case they might also get sick. After spending four days in bed, alone and with nothing to do, the managers finally let him have visitors once he felt better and he ended up getting Sungmin instead, who are the least sympathetic person on Earth. Hyukjae had promised to spend time with him as soon as the managers lift the ban on visitors, yet the one with Donghae right now is Sungmin.

“It’s Zhoumi, not even an elephant can take him down,” Sungmin points out unhelpfully.

Donghae grumbles in agreement. It’s true; Zhoumi could go bare shoulder on a winter day and still not be able to get sick. Completely unfair. 

“If I come back and you haven’t taken your medicine yet, I’ll tell the manager-hyungs to not let you have any visitors and you won’t be able to see Hyukjae,” Sungmin threatens.

“No!” He cries, disentangling himself from his cocoon and crawls his way through a pile of pillows toward Sungmin. “I haven’t seen him in four days!”

“You’re not helping yourself by being stubborn,” Sungmin says, shaking his head. “When you take your medicine you can have visitors again.” He puts the medicine bottle on the nightstand and heads toward the door.

“If I die, I won’t invite you to my funeral!” He shouts at Sungmin’s back. 

Sungmin stops at the door and turns around. “Good! I don’t want to go anyway,” Sungmin says, before walking out.

“Argh!” Donghae throws himself back into the bed, hating Sungmin and everybody, but mostly he hates Hyukjae. Donghae hasn’t seen him for so long, and texting and phone calls just make his loneliness that more painful. Doesn’t he know how much Donghae misses him?

 

\---

  
  
Hyukjae enters the dorm room carrying a grocery bag and a gift bag on each hand. He is greeted by a glowering Sungmin.

“How is he?” Hyukjae asks, using his foot to slip off his shoes and Sungmin answers him with a glare.

“That bad, huh,” he says, looking at Sungmin’s displeased expression. He walks past the living room and toward the corridor where it leads all the bedrooms are located. Sungmin follows him and they stop right in front of Hyukjae’s door. He places his bags down for a moment and stretches out the kinks in his arms.     

“A pain in the ass,” Sungmin eventually says.

Hyukjae lips twitch in amusement. “As per usual then.” A normally manic Donghae is already hard to handle, now throw in a bored bedridden Donghae who could test the patience of a saint.

“I don’t know how you deal with him when he’s like this,” Sungmin says, making a gesture toward Hyukjae’s bedroom door, “completely insufferable.”

“That what make him so cute,” Hyukjae says, grinning and glances to look at the door to his bedroom fondly.

“You have terrible taste,” Sungmin says with disgust. 

“I know.” He shrugs, he doesn’t mind it since Donghae is Donghae and Hyukjae would never stop him from being himself. He fell in love with Donghae because of who he is and to change that doesn’t sit right with him.

“What’s he doing now?” he asks. Hyukjae made a promise to Donghae to spend the whole day with him as soon as Donghae feel better. Today was suppose to be that day, yet a last minute scheduling pushed their date to back to later in the day and then a series of studio’s mishap caused him to delay their date even further. Donghae refuses to answer any of Hyukjae’s texts after that, so he had to rely on Sungmin to keep him updated on Donghae’s status.

Sungmin rolls his eyes and says, “Planning his funeral.” Hyukjae laughs, that’s just like Donghae. Illness always brings out the theatrical side in Donghae.

“Thank you for watching him, hyung,” he says, grateful that Sungmin was able to keep Donghae company even though Hyukjae wishes it was him in Sungmin’s place instead.

“It was either me or the other members, but since they would only coddle him instead and feed into his insanity, so I volunteer.” Sungmin shrugs. “Somebody got to keep the brat in line.”

“Still, thanks,” he says, patting Sungmin’s shoulder. “I appreciate all your help.”

“Yea, yea, you deal with him, I’m going to go and get a drink,” Sungmin pauses as if recalling some horrid memory before continuing again. “Make it several drinks, so I can pretend that I didn’t spend my whole day babysitting Lee Donghae.”

Hyukjae smirks, because despite Sungmin’s biting words the fact is that they both knows that, besides Hyukjae, Sungmin is always the first one to jump in if anyone needed help. 

“Have a great night, then.” He waves goodbye to Sungmin and turns to face the door in front of him.

Hyukjae knocks several times on it. It’s his room but like all things that belong to him, Donghae commandeer it also. “Donghae, I’m back. Can I come in?”

After a few minutes of no response, he twists the doorknob and lets himself in. The room is cover in darkness and he could barely make out any features. He finds the light switch next to the door and flicks it on.

The light hits the room in a flash and Hyukjae’s eyes immediately gravitate to a circle of pillows surrounding a lump of duvet lying in the middle of the bed. He walks back out of the room to grab the bags he left outside and comes back and heads directly toward the bed.

He puts the bags down on the floor and clears some of the pillows out of his way before he sits on the bed.

Hyukjae takes a deep breath. “Donghae,” he begins, “I’m sorry.”

No response.

“I know I should have come home earlier,” he continues, “but the TV program I was on had several problems with the recording so we have to stay overtime to redo it.”

The lump jerks the blankets closer. Hyukjae waits, then--“I hate you, go away,” the lump tells him petulantly.

Not deter, Hyukjae persists, “I’m truly sorry. I wanted to go home as fast as I can to see you after they finally finished the second recording but I was drag.”

“You were suppose to be here five hours ago,” the lump says accusingly.

“I know.” He winces; an hour late is one thing but five hours? He knows a simple apology won’t work here, not now, not after having to apologies so many times for missing their dates. Luckily, he came here with a game plan.

“I got you a present though,” he says, reaching into his gift bag and pulls out a 36” nemo plush toy.  

“You can’t buy my forgiveness,” the lump retorts from underneath layers of blanket.

“Oh,” he says casually, “then you don’t want this nemo toy? It’s the 36” one I remember you been eyeing.”

Silent.

He shrugs. “I guess if you don’t want it then, I’m going to give it to Ryeowook.” 

Again no response, but Hyukjae waits. Two minutes past, the lump shifts and an arm suddenly pokes out of the blanket. “Gimme,” it says beseechingly.

Hyukjae lips twitch, he got him. He gently places the plush toy off to the side of the bed and out of Donghae’s reach. He grabs hold of the Donghae’s uncovered arm and drags him forward and right into his chest.

“Ahh!” Donghae lets out a scream of surprise as he falls into Hyukjae’s arms and Hyukjae swiftly wraps himself around Donghae.

For a moment they remain still in the comforting silent, but Donghae breaks it by quickly pushing himself off of Hyukjae’s chest and glares at him furiously, his whole body tense and ready to explode any moment.

Since Donghae has fallen ill, Hyukjae hasn’t seen him in four days and now he gets his chance to touch, to hold, and just to see him physically after what felt like weeks instead of days. He takes in the person right before him: Donghae’s hair is in disarray, his cheeks flushed from the fever and his eyes are a little red. He’s basically a mess but Hyukjae, who always been kinda stupid around Donghae, is breathless by the beauty before him.

“You--,” Donghae hisses, destroying the moment.

“I miss you,” he interrupts before Donghae can curse Hyukjae six ways from Sunday. It shuts Donghae up, but it didn’t take away the petulant expression on his face.

“I’m still mad at you,” he says, poking Hyukjae’s chest.

“I know and you have the right to be piss off at me, but I’m here and I won’t leave you alone again no matter what you say or do,” Hyukjae tells him sincerely.

Donghae's expression doesn’t let up, but he could see how Donghae's shoulder is less tense. He knows he’s making progress.

“I don’t know if I should believe you,” he says reluctantly. Hyukjae’s heart tighten at the statement and even though he knows he was the one who made Donghae say that, it didn’t stop the pain he feels.

“You don’t have to believe me, just let me prove it to you.”

Hesitatingly, Donghae nods his head and says, “Alright.”

Hyukjae, happy with the news, tries to kiss him, but Donghae suddenly pushes him away and covers his own mouth.

“No,” he says behind his hands.

Hyukjae frowns and hurts by the rejection, he asks, “Why?”

“I’m infected.”

He raises an eyebrow at that.

“Contagious,” Donghae elaborates.

Hyukjae couldn’t resist a smile. “I don’t mind. It means you can take care of me if I get sick.”

Donghae narrow his eyes. “Don’t sweet talk me,” he fumes and hits Hyukjae’s chest several times before Hyukjae grabs his hands and kisses them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “next time you get sick I’ll be there with you every step of the way.”

Donghae didn’t meet his eyes as he say, “You always make promises you can’t keep.”

Hyukjae knows he can’t deny it. With SJM’s busy schedule and his own individual activities, they rarely have anytime to themselves and trying to have a relationship while constantly in the public’s eyes is hard task but they somehow manage to do it. These days, though, he finds himself having to apologize for being late or not being able to make it to their date. Donghae had accepted all that with a strained smile.

He wants to make it up to him, so right after he left the studio he bought all of Donghae’s favorite snacks, games, and books. Then, he made a called to one of the manager-hyungs and negotiate three days off, so he can spend some time with Donghae.

“I got you pokapoka chip cookies,” he says, desperate to make Donghae turn his way. 

Donghae perks up at that. “You did?”

“I even brought games and some books for you. We can play them right now if you want.” He bought enough stuff to keep them occupied for days and he intends to be there for Donghae as he recover from his flu.

“I want to watch a movie and--,” Donghae abruptly turns away from Hyukjae, but this time Hyukjae pulls him back and meets his gaze, “--and cuddle with you,” he finishes.

“Whatever you want,” Hyukjae promises, this time he’ll make sure to keep it. “You have me for the rest of the night and tomorrow. I won’t disappoint you again.”

Donghae tangles their hands together and finally lets out a smile. “I don’t need you to tell me that, just be here with me.”

“In sickness and in health,” he vows, leaning in and capturing Donghae’s lips before he could say any other words. The world fades away and it’s just him and Donghae again.  

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from panic! at the disco. this was all about sick!donghae but then it started to focus on eunhae's relationship issue instead. ugh, brain. anyway, i hope you guys enjoy it! thanks for reading. :D


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